It’s not exactly light summer reading, but a new report from the National Agricultural Statistics Service provides a lot of important information.

“Crop Production-Historical Track Records” has just been released by NASS, an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The report contains historic estimates of acreage, yield, production, price, and value, as well as comparisons of preliminary and final acreage estimates for more than 20 major U.S. crops.

I’ll be using the report to provide background and statistics for some of my Agweek articles over the coming year.

Statisticians seldom get the respect they deserve. But those of us in agriculture, including ag journalists, would have a far tougher time doing our jobs without the good folks at NASS.

The report is available online at www.nass.usda.gov/.